1. Field
The present disclosure pertains to the field of electronic components. More particularly, the present disclosure pertains to distributing processing activity across various components or portions of components based on power consumption and/or thermal considerations.
2. Description of Related Art
Effectively monitoring and adjusting the consumption of power and the consequent generation of heat of electronic components is an ongoing struggle. Electronic components such as integrated circuits continue to pack more and more functionality into a smaller area. The result of such increasing density of logic is typically an increase in the power density, the power consumed per unit of area. Higher power consumption per unit area typically results in higher heat generation per unit area. Thus, while increased processing throughput may be achieved by increasing logic density, new and innovative techniques may be desirable to contend with the resultant thermal issues.
Prior art thermal and/or power control apparatuses are typically driven by one or both of two concerns. The first concern is device or system temperature. An electronic device typically has a particular maximum operating temperature, above which damage to the device may occur. Some power consumption limiting techniques aim to prevent electronic devices from surpassing their maximum operating temperature. Reduction of power consumption by reducing operating frequency, operating voltage, or otherwise reducing processing is often done in response to an elevating or elevated temperature (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,578, “Method and apparatus for programmable thermal sensor for an integrated circuit”). Thus, the typical response is to lower the overall processing level when the temperature is perceived as being too high. Clearly, however, performance may be negatively impacted when the overall processing level is reduced.
A second concern is simply the amount of power being consumed. Often, the design of portable devices is to a large extent driven by battery life. To improve battery life, aggressive power consumption limiting techniques are often employed. These power saving techniques are often triggered by the amount of processing occurring (with aggressive cutbacks upon signs of idle hardware), user selections, the removal of an A/C power source, etc. Again, the typical response is to reduce the overall level of processing or the overall set of enabled hardware by shutting down any idle portions. Here too, the reduction in overall processing obviously can impact performance. Techniques that attempt to power down only idle hardware may impact performance because there may be some latency associated with restarting the hardware or bringing it back up to speed.
Thus, most power consumption control techniques focus on idling existing hardware when not in use or simply reducing the overall throughput or processing level (via voltage, frequency, etc.) to control overall temperature. As power consumption continues to increase in importance as a design consideration, novel techniques to contend with power consumption are desirable.